


Kentucy Fried Child Killer

by nazgularepeopletoo, No_Day_But_Today



Series: VFD Unsolved [3]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Buzzfeed Unsolved Fusion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Rated For Descriptions Of Violence Against Children, This Is Just An Excuse For Me To Infodump At This Point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23485318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nazgularepeopletoo/pseuds/nazgularepeopletoo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_Day_But_Today/pseuds/No_Day_But_Today
Summary: Installment III of VFD Unsolved-----------------------------------------------------------------“Hello again, and welcome back to VFD Unsolved. Today we’re discussing the case of the Oakland County Child Killer, a depraved and audacious serial killer responsible for the kidnapping and murder of at least four children in 1976 and 1977.” Jacqueline shot Larry a confused look.“Audacious?”“Yes, audacious is a word that here means showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks.”“How is this guy any more audacious than any other serial killer?”“Well, Jacqueline, this particular serial killer had a penchant - a word that here means a strong or particular liking for or tendency to do something - for disposing of bodies in particularly public places. He even disposed of a body within view of a police station.”“Within view of the police station?! And they still didn’t catch this guy?!”“Let’s get into it and find out.”
Series: VFD Unsolved [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1059407
Kudos: 2





	Kentucy Fried Child Killer

“Hello again, and welcome back to VFD Unsolved. Today we’re discussing the case of the Oakland County Child Killer, a depraved and audacious serial killer responsible for the kidnapping and murder of at least four children in 1976 and 1977.” Jacqueline shot Larry a confused look.

“Audacious?”

“Yes, audacious is a word that here means showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks.”

“How is this guy any more audacious than any other serial killer?”

“Well, Jacqueline, this particular serial killer had a penchant - a word that here means a strong or particular liking for or tendency to do something - for disposing of bodies in particularly public places. He even disposed of a body within view of a police station.”

“Within view of the police station?! And they still didn’t catch this guy?!”

“Let’s get into it and find out.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

“February 15th, 1976 12 year old Mark Stebbins of Ferndale, Michigan did not return home from the American Legion Hall. Four days later, his body was found lying in a snowbank in the parking lot of an office building. He was still wearing the clothes he went missing in, and he had been strangled, sexually abused, and had ligature marks indicating he had been restrained while captive.”

“He kept him for four days?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s… that’s unusual, right?”

“Yeah, 88.5% of kidnapping-murder victims are murdered within the first 24 hours, so waiting  _ four days _ is really uncommon.”

“Wow, yeah. Did he keep all of them for four days?”

“Well, you’ll see.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Ten months later on December 22nd, 1976, 12 year old Jill Robinson of Royal Oak, Michigan after an argument with her mother. The next day, Jill’s bicycle would be found behind a local craft store and, four days later, her body would be found within view of the Troy police department. She was, once again, still wearing the clothes she went missing in and had been shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun.”

“So, this time, he shot her?

“Yeah, this victim was unique in the fact that he shot her. His other three victims were asphyxiated in some way.”

“So, at this point, did the police think that something was up? Or did they think these were totally unrelated?”

“Well, it actually took until they had a third victim for them to think that they might have a serial killer on their hands.”

“I guess the long period between the kidnappings would help with that, they’re not going to immediately see a connection between the two cases. Anyway, get back to it.”

“The third victim, 10 year old Kristine Mihelich from Berkley, Michigan, went missing January 2nd, 1977 on her way home from a convenience store. This time, her body was found  _ nineteen days _ after she had been missing. She had been smothered to death less than 24 hours before her body was found.”

“How… how do they know how long she’d been dead for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with decomposition?”

“I don’t think that a body starts to really decompose within 24 hours…”

“Maybe temperature? I really don’t know.”

“Let’s google it, now I need to know… Uuuh, google says that a body’s temperature drops about one degree per hour it’s been dead.”

“Huh, cool.”

“The more you know, everyone.”

Okay, well, as I said, it took until the third victim for the police to suspect that they had a serial killer on their hands. At this point, the state police formed a task force, but, unfortunately, it was too late for the Oakland County Child Killer’s last confirmed victim, 11 year old Timothy King.”

“Wait,  _ confirmed _ victim?”

“You’re a little ahead of me now, I’ll get to that in a second.”

“Oh, okay. Continue.”

“Timothy King, from Birmingham, Michigan disappeared on his way home from a drug store on March 16th, 1977. The police mounted a wide spread search and Timothy’s parents made an television appearance, where Timothy’s mother would state that she was looking forward to when Timothy came home, so that she could give him his favorite meal - Kentucky Fried Chicken. Unfortunately, his body would be found on March 22nd and an autopsy would reveal that he had been sexually assaulted and suffocated, and that his stomach contents contained his favorite meal - fried chicken.”

“ _ What? _ The guy kidnapped this poor child, watched that child’s parents plead for their return on live television,  _ and then fed that child fried chicken - a food expressly mentioned in that appearence - as a final fuck you?” _

“Yeah, insane right?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, that brings us to the end of the  _ official _ list of victims -”

“Oh!”

“But, some people believe that there may be up to three other possible victims.”

“Why do they think that there were more victims?”

“Well, theres three other kids and teens that went missing in that same general area who turned up dead, all killed in a similar way to the confirmed victims. There’s just a enough differences in the cases where we couldn’t say that the Oakland County Child Killer  _ for sure _ killed them. Not unless they ever catch the guy and get a confession.”

“Oh, okay.” Jacqueline paused for a moment. “What exactly was different?”

“Well, it varies by the case. 16 year old  Cynthia Cadieux from Roseville, Michigan was found on January 16th, 1976, in Bloomfield, Michigan. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma, so we have a different method of killing, but she’s the right age and from the right geographic area. 14 year old Jane Allen went missing from Royal Oak after she got into a car while hitchhiking. Her body was found in a river in Miamisburg, Ohio and her cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. So in this case, we have a similar kill method and geographic profile, but the body dump site didn’t match the Oakland County profile. Lastly, 12 year old Kimberly Alice King disappeared from Warren, Michigan on September 15th, 1979. However, her body was never found so there is nothing to tie her disappearance to the case.”

“Oh, wow, okay. So, really, we won’t know if any of these cases are tied to the Oakland County one unless they catch the guy or someone else confesses.”

“Yeah, they’re essentially cold cases until someone comes forward and confesses.”

“Wow, that’s awful.”

“Yeah.”

“Were there any suspects of anything to help the case?”

“Yeah, actually, I was just about to get into those. So, when Timothy King disappeared, a witness came forward and stated that she saw a boy who looked like King speaking to a man in a blue AMC Gremlin in the drug store parking lot where Timothy disappeared from. The man was described as being a white male between 25 and 35 with a dark complexion, shaggy hair, and sideburns.”

“So… a good chunk of the Detroit population…”

“Yeah, that really doesn’t narrow it down any, huh?”

“No it does not.”

“The police believed that he had a job that allowed him freedom of movement and made him appear trustworthy to children. They believed that he was familiar with the area, but may have lived in a remote location in order to keep children for several days without alerting any neighbors. The police followed up on over 18,000 tips, but they found nothing to help them in their investigations. However, they did end up unearthing a child pornogrophy ring that operated out of North Fox Island in Lake Michigan.”

“Oh! Well, that’s good, I guess!”

“Yeah! Didn’t catch a murderer, but at least you brought down a child sex abuse ring.”

“It’s kinda like a consolation prize!” Larry laughed.

“Can you image? The powers that be being like ‘we know you wanted to catch this one guy, but you can have these other guys instead!’”

“Yeah! Just a little treat for all their hard work!”

“Oh my god! A little treat! Well, even though the police didn’t end up catching this guy, they did have several persons of interest.”

“Oh! Do tell!”

“The first suspect was a man identified as ‘Allen’ and his friend ‘Frank’. ‘Allen’ sent a letter to the police saying that he was a sadomasochistic slave of Frank’s, and that Frank was the Oakland County Child Killer. He stated that Frank, a Vietnam veteran, was traumatized from killing children in Vietnam, and was now murdering the children of the affluent - a word here that means rich or wealthy - members of society to punish them for sending troops to Vietnam. Allen stated that he was remorseful as he had accompanied Frank on several of his hunts. The police contacted a psychiatrist who was able to converse with Allen through coded messages in the Detroit Free Press. They arranged to meet at a bar, but Allen never showed up. He was never heard from again.”

“Woah. That, uh. That’s a lot to unpack here.”

“Yeah.”

“Do they think that this was real? Like, do they think it was a scam or what?”

“Well, there isn’t really anything pointing towards Allen being fake, but there’s also not anything that would confirm that he’s real.”

“Do you think, if they are real and this note isn’t making shit up, that Frank might have found out and killed Allen?”

“I don’t know! I think it’s just something that’s going to remain a mystery.”

“You know I hate it when you say that.” Larry laughs and shuffles a few of his papers around.

“Anyway, the next suspect on our list is Archibald Edward Sloan, a pedophile known to victimize boys in his neighborhood. He became a suspect when police discovered that hair found on both Timothy Kings and Mark Stebbins matched hair found in the trunk of his 1966 Pontiac Bonneville - however, the hair did not belong to Sloan himself.”  
“So, they found two of the kid’s hair in his trunk?”

“No, there was hair found on the remains of two of the victims that was a genetic match to hair they found inside his trunk.”

“Oh, okay. So, something that was in his trunk was also on the bodys, so there's someone who ties the two cases together, it’s just not Sloan.”

“Exactly. Witnesses to Timothy King’s kidnapping claimed to see the boy get taken by two men, one of which looked like John Wayne Gacy.”

“Oh! Tying right in with a big name in the Serial Killer Character Universe!”

“We’ve been over this, there’s not a Serial Killer Character Universe, this isn’t Marvel. Anyways, the hair found in the trunk and on the bodies was not a match for Gacy, so he probably wasn’t even involved anyways.

“Aw, that’s too bad! That’s be pretty crazy if the two were tied together.”

“Sorry to pop that bubble. I will say, though, that Sloan did fail two polygraph tests in 2010 and 2012 when he was questioned by police.”

“Two?! He failed two polygraph tests?!”

“Yeah, they questioned him twice and he failed both times.”

“That doesn’t look good for him!”

“Yeah, it really doesn’t. Our next suspect is Ted Lamborgine, a retired auto worker from Ohio. Lamborgine was arrested for being a part of a child pornography ring -”

“There’s a lot of child pornogralhy in this story, Larry. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either, but what can you do? At least it was all about catching the pedophiles.”

“True!”

“Where was I, oh, Lamborgine plead guilty to 15 sex related counts involving young boys rather than take a plea deal as the deal required him to take a polygraph test on the Oakland County cases.”

“Oh! That’s kind of suspicious.”

“Yeah, definitely! I will say, our last suspect is much more interesting than Lamborgine.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, definitely! Our last suspect is actually our newest suspect as well. Cristopher Busch, son of high level General Motors executive Lee Busch, was a known pediphile in Bloomfield Township. Shortly before Timothy King’s disappearance, Busch was brought in on suspicions of child pornography involvment. He allegedly committed suicide in November of 1978, a little over a year after the last confirmed Oakland County victim was found dead.”

“Oh, that’s kind of suspicious. The killings stop shortly before he kills himself.”

“Yeah, but, as we’re about to find out, he may not have killed himself.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah! When the police found his body, there was no gunshot residue on his hands or any blood spatter in the room- suggesting that he wasn’t shot in the place where he was found. He was found wrapped in a sheet with one bullet hole between his eyes. However, they found four shell casing and absolutely no blood evidence.”

“Oh, he definitely didn’t kill himself. I’m no cop, but even I can tell that that’s a body dump.”

“Yeah. All of this actually came to light when Barry King, Timothy’s father, made inquiries to the police. Since then, the State police have released over 3,400 pages of investigative records to King, but I couldn’t unearth anything in my research.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Our last bit of information here comes for 2015, just a few years ago now. In 2015, a man known only as ‘Jeff’ came forward to police with information that was similar to the letters from ‘Allen’. He claimed he was part of a team of a dozen investigators involved with the case who had logged over 10,000 hours of investigation. He originally refused to release his findings, but, in 2012, he presented his findings to a group of Detroit journalists. Jeff alleged that there were actually 11 to 16 victims, and that they all had been sacrificed by Wiccans in rituals coinciding with Pagan holidays or events on the lunar calendar.”

“Everything you’ve told me about this case just gets weirder and weirder. First we have pediphile sex rings, then (maybe) John Wayne Gacy, then a suspect who was definitely murdered, and now this guy’s talking about  _ pagan rituals??? _ ” 

“Yeah, it’s really insane. Nothing much came of this guy’s testimony, probably because it’s completely insane and has no actual factual basis.”

“Yeah, that’s just wild!”

“Unfortunately, this brings us to current day, where the murders of Mark Stebbins, Jill Robertson, Kristine Mihelich, and Timothy King remain unsolved.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“My money’s on Sloan. The DNA evidence in his car ties him to the cases even if he didn’t kidnap all those kids. If he didn’t, someone he knows did.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty sketchy. Though, I think I’d put my money on Lamborgine.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! He just seems really shady, and the fact that he refused a plea deal because he’d have to answer questions about the Oakland County killings is just really suspicious.”

“Yeah, I agree. Well, I guess that’s all for this week, folks. Join us next week when we investigate the unfortunate case of the Baudelaire children!”


End file.
